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State lacks means to fight pollution from manure spills

By PERRY BEEMAN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

December 30, 2005


State environmental officials knew for seven months that livestock manure was polluting several Carroll County creeks that feed the water supply for metro Des Moines and Ottumwa.
Yet until the past two weeks, when four separate manure spills were reported — including one that killed fish along 15 miles of Brushy Creek — state investigators said they were nearly powerless to do anything to stop the polluters. The spills have been traced to several small cattle feedlots suspected of not having adequate manure-holding structures.
State environmental inspector Dan Stipe described the Carroll County streams last week as being thick with frozen manure. "You can walk on it, there are so many solids in it," he said of Storm Creek, the site of the most recent manure flow.
The manure pollution causes the Des Moines-area water utility to spend more to kill bacteria in the Raccoon River, one of its key water supplies. The spills also can spoil stretches of the Raccoon River popular for kayaking and canoeing.
Perhaps most important, the Carroll County pollution illustrates key flaws in Iowa's clean-water policies — a hodgepodge of regulations that environmental activists contend actually weaken federal clean-water standards in Iowa.
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complete articlehere

the Republican takeover of America and its fatal results. "Officials knew for years that Republican manure was polluting the national thought supply, but they were powerless to do anything to stop the pollution."

:(

We're scheduled to go to Des Moines this summer. Can't wait to turn on the tap and get a nice heaping glass of bullshit, courtesy of Iowans who are more concerned about the cattle industry and its unfettered "right" to stink up the state than they are in having safe drinking water.